Stefana Broadbent: How the Internet enables intimacy

In our meeting on Monday, February 11, we talked about the perception that computer mediated communication is distancing, and that it interrupts social practices. Alissa brought up a TED talk she’d seen making the opposite claim, that it brings us close together.

“We worry that IM, texting, Facebook are spoiling human intimacy, but Stefana Broadbent’s research shows how communication tech is capable of cultivating deeper relationships, bringing love across barriers like distance and workplace rules.

Stefana Broadbent watches us while we talk (and IM, and text). She is one of a new class of ethnographers who study the way our social habits and relationships function and mutate in the digital age.